First, picketing by..."whom" exactly? The Bay Area Labor Against War is the better or would be, the better grouping to do any such picketing or, if we did it RIGHT, a "lobby". Maybe. The issue, for me, isn't the target being SFLC's invitation to Pelosi to speak, rather but *who* is calling for such a picket. I think the Coalition doing this is probably, on the face of it, a mistake at that time. To wit...
Secondly, If one is trying to bring the labor movement in to a united front, where the issue is the demands of the united front, then picketing the same group over the issue of the war is simply very self-defeating...tactically. If one doesn't care, fine, but if one does, then it's dumb. Thirdly, despite this, the SLFC did endorse but at his point it was a completely paper endorsement, due, no doubt in large part, because of the ill conceived picket. Some of the leaders of the LC did speak and show up, but overall zero resources were devoted to demonstration as far as I know. Fourthly, it would of been very easy for Bonnie to have given an exact number of the people who showed up at the "picket". About 12. Shows how important anti-war activists considered picketing Pelosi was. Fortunately, I suspect that because the picket as described by Bonnie was such a failure, it represented absolutely no 'threat' whatsoever to the SFLC and seen as such. If 100 people had shown up, perhaps the results would of been different. Fifthly, again, it was the fake way this picket was draw up. Involving no labor groups at all, no community organizations, no veterans groups, etc. The leaflet the ad-hoc group made up, as reprinted here, was fundamentally leftist rhetoric and not reflecting anything from the Coalition, Bonnie, yourself helped organize. When you state: "We blame the commanders of capital--the Democrats and Republican warlords themselves--for the wars; for the economic draft and for brainwashing our youth." This is the *position* of the Coalition? Really? I didn't know that. No wonder Oct 17 was such a failure. Let's *exclude* people who voted for, say, Pelosi? That'll show 'em. Lastly, the way the discussion unfolded, that no one who was on the SFLC said anything only shows that most, almost all the people at the meeting took a vote that was totally uninformed. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how I would of voted, but the coalition, as such, did the right thing withdrawing the picket *under those circumstances*. The idea that you are "only picketing Pelosi" and not the SFLC is absurd. Do you really think that is serious? That that is how it seen? Why do you think only a dozen people showed up??? ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
